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RomanticismART 102 Gardners - Chapter 28Jean Thobaben

Instructor

Romanticism, Realism,Potography:

Europe and America 1800-1870

REALISM Revolutions

The Age of Industry

The Invention of Photography

The Hudson River School

Fantasies in Architecture

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From Neoclassicism to Romanticism

• Jacques-Louis David's stature and prominence as an artist and

his commitment to classicism attracted numerous students,

including Antoine-Jean Gros, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson,

and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

• Although they were deeply influenced by David, these artists also

moved beyond the somewhat structured confines of

Neoclassicism in their exploration of the exotic and the erotic and

in the use of fictional narratives for the subjects of their paintings.

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Jean-Auguste-

Dominique Ingres(1780-1867)

Ingres was David’s

best pupil and the

primary spokesman

for Neoclassicism.

His portraits are known

for their crisp polished

style which have an

almost photographic

quality.

Louis Bertan, 1832, oils, 46 x 37”, The Louvre, Paris

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• Ingres's work had often been severely criticized in Paris

because of its `Gothic' distortions, and when he exhibited in

the Salon of 1824 he was surprised to find himself acclaimed

and set up as the leader of the academic opposition to the

new Romanticism.

The Apotheosis of Homer, 1837,

oils, 12 x 15’, The Louvre, Paris

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• However, Ingres also departed from Neoclassicism.

• A Romantic taste for the exotic and erotic is seen in his Grande

Odalisque, which shows a languidly reclining, nude odalisque.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Grande Odalisque, 1814.

Oil on canvas, approx. 2' 11" x 5' 4". Louvre, Paris

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Antoine-Jean Gros (1771-1835)

• Antoine-Jean Gros's painting of Napoleon at the

Pesthouse at Jaffa presents an exalted public image of

Napoleon as a compassionate and fearless leader by

showing him touching, as if capable of miraculously

healing, the sores of a plague victim.

• The mosque courtyard with its Moorish arcades in the

background reveals Gros's fascination with the

exoticism of the Near East.

Antoine-Jean Gros, Napoleon at the Pesthouse at Jaffa, 1804. Oil on canvas,

approx. 17' 5" x 23' 7". Louvre, Paris

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Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson(1767-1824)

• Based on Chateaubriand's novel, The Genius of Christianity, Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson'sThe Burial of Atala concerns the tragic love story of two Native Americans in the wilderness of Louisiana.

• The exotic locale and the erotic passion of the story appealed to the public's fascination with what it perceived as the primitivism of Native American tribal life.

• The painting technique is highly Neoclassical but the theme is Romantic.

Girodet-Trioson, The Burial of Atala, 1808. Oil on canvas, 6' 11" x 8' 9". Louvre, Paris.

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The Rise of Romanticism

• Romanticism was born as a reaction to the restrictions of

neoclassicism.

• Romanticism believed that the path to freedom was through

imagination and feeling rather than through reason and thinking.

• Romantic artists are interested in foreign lands and exotic themes

in art.

• They drew inspiration from history, music, literature and poetry.

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• Romantic artists explored the

outer edges of

consciousness and

developed a taste for the

"Gothick" (the Middle Ages),

the fantastic, the occult, and

the macabre, and for the

sublime, which inspires

feelings of awe mixed with

terror.

• Giovanni Battista

Piranesi's series of etched

prints of imaginary

dungeons, the Carceri

(prisons), shows grim,

infernal-looking

architectural fantasies of

massive arches, vaults,

piers, and stairways.

• Within the gloomy,

menacing spaces move

small, insect-like human

figures.

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• Henry Fuseli 's (1741-1825) The Nightmare illustrates the

Romantic taste in night moods of horror, in Gothick fantasies,

in the demonic,in the macabre, and in the sadistic.

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781. Oil on canvas, 3' 4" x 4' 2".

The Detroit Institute of the Arts

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William Blake (1757-1827)

• The visionary English artist

William Blake derived the

compositions of many of his

paintings and poems from spirits

who visited him in dreams.

• He came to believe that

rationalism's search for material

explanations of the world stifled

human nature's spiritual side.

• He also believed that orthodox

religions killed the individual

creative impulse.

• Blake's highly individual

vision of the Almighty in

Ancient of Days combines

the concept of the Creator

with that of wisdom as a part

of God.

• The figure's ideal classical

anatomy merges with the

inner dark dreams of

Gothick Romanticism.

William Blake, Ancient of Days, 1794.

Metal relief etching, hand-colored,

approx. 9 1/2" x 6 3/4".

Whitworth Art Gallery,

University of Manchester, England.

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Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

• Goya was a Spanish artist whose

paintings, drawings, and

engravings reflected contemporary

historical upheavals and

influenced important

19th & 20th-century painters.

• Like Velázquez, Goya was a Spanish

court painter whose best work was done apart from his official duties.

Self-portrait at 69 years 1815

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The Countess of Carpio, Marquise de

la Solana (c.1798) Oils, 71 x 48“,

Musee du Louvre, Paris

The Parasol, 1777Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

After he had settled in Madrid he began

to paint portraits, the oldest copy known

is dated 1774.

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• To their exploration of the exotic,

erotic, fictional, or fantastic,

Romantic artists such as Goya

also incorporated dramatic action

into their paintings.

• Goya's etching and aquatint The

Sleep of Reason Produces

Monsters, from a series Los

Caprichos (The Caprices), shows

the artist asleep while threatening

creatures symbolizing folly and

ignorance converge on him.

• The image may be interpreted

as showing what emerges

when reason is suppressed,

but it can also be interpreted as

Goya's commitment to the

creative process and the

Romantic spirit.

Francisco Goya,

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters,

from Los Caprichos, 1798.

Etching and aquatint, 8 1/2" x 6".

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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• In 1792 Goya was ill and went completely

deaf. This turned him in upon himself. The

gaiety slowly disappeared from his painting;

the colors darkened and the brushwork

became looser and more expressive.

• Meanwhile he continued with his services as

crown painter; and by 1800, he creates La

Familia de Carlos IV (The Family of Charles

IV).

Goya, Family of Carlos IV, 1800-01, Oil on canvas, 280 x 336 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid

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This detail allows us to see

Goya’s “painterly”brushwork.

The jewelry and rich fabrics

glisten.

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• In support of Ferdinand VII's claim to the throne, Napoleon Bonaparte sent French troops to Spain, but after ousting Charles IV and Maria Luisa, installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne.

• The French invasion was met with Spanish resistance. In retaliation for an attack on French troops by Spanish patriots on 2 May 1808, the French spent the next day, 3 May 1808, executing Spanish citizens.

• Goya painted an emotional record of the ruthless event in 1814.

The Shootings of May Third 1808, 1814 , Oil on canvas, 104 x 136”,

Museo del Prado, Madrid.

20Detail from

Goya's Third of May, 1808

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• During the latter part of his life,

before he moved to France,

where he died, Goya covered

the walls of his Deaf Man's

House with his famous "black

paintings" the last and most

weird and extrovert of his

strange and haunted genius.

• One, "Saturn Devouring one

of his Children", is one of the

most horrifying pictures ever

painted.

1821-23, Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain

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Theodore Gericault(1791-1842)

• Gericault's paintings began

to exhibit qualities that set

him apart from other

neoclassical French

painters as David.

• Géricault soon became the

acknowledged leader of

the French romantics.

• His Charging Chasseur

displays violent action,

dramatic color, and a bold

design that evoke powerful

emotion1814. Oils, 349 x 266 cm, Musee du

Louvre, Paris

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• Théodore Géricault's ambitious painting of the Raft of the Medusa

shows the handful of survivors of the frigate Medusa, which, due to

the incompetence of the captain, a political appointee, had run

aground on a reef.

• This grandly conceived, large-scale painting combines a realistic

attempt to record the event accurately with a Romantic taste for the

drama and horror.

Théodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819. Oil on canvas,

approx. 16' x 23'. Louvre, Paris.

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• Géricault's portrait of an

Insane Woman (Envy) is an

examination of the influence

of mental states on the

human face, which, it was

believed, accurately revealed

character.

• It reflects the Romantic

interest in mental

aberration and the

irrational states of the

mind.

Théodore Géricault, Insane

Woman (Envy), 1822-1823.

Oil on canvas, approx. 2' 4" x

1' 9". Musée des Beaux-Arts,

Lyons.

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Eugene Delacroix (1798-1863)

• In contrast to the

Neoclassical artist

Ingres, who claimed

drawing (line) to be the

probity of art, the

Romantic painter

Eugène Delacroix

promoted the value of

color.

Self-Portrait, 1837, oil on canvas,

Musée du Louvre, Paris.

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• Delacroix's painting of

Paganini attempts to

convey a sense of the

sound and feeling of

the great violinist's

inspired virtuoso

performances.

Eugène Delacroix, Paganini, ca.

1832. Oil on canvas, approx. 1' 5" x

111/2". The Phillips Collection,

Washington, D.C.

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• Delacroix's works were products of his view that the

artist's powers of imagination would in turn capture and

inflame viewers' imagination.

• Literature of imaginative power served Delacroix as a

useful source of subject matter.

• Delacroix's Death of Sardanapalus, inspired by Lord

Byron's 1821 narrative poem "Sardanapalus," is an

erotic and exotic orgy of death and destruction

conceived as grand drama.

Eugène Delacroix, Death of Sardanapalus, 1826. Oil on

canvas, approx. 12' 1" x 16' 3". Louvre, Paris.

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• Delacroix also painted current events, particularly

tragic or sensational ones.

• He captured the passion and energy of the Revolution

of 1830 in his painting Liberty Leading the People.

• He balances contemporary historical fact (the 1830

Revolution) with poetic allegory (the figure of Liberty)

and, through the title and his inclusion of the towers of

Notre-Dame in Paris, also locates the scene in a

specific time and place.

Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People, , 1830. Oil on canvas, 8' 6" x 10' 8". Louvre, Paris.

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• Delacroix's visit to North Africa in 1832 renewed his Romantic

conviction that beauty exists in the fierceness of nature, natural

processes, and natural beings, especially animals, which he

painted in scenes of violent and exotic tiger hunts.

Eugène Delacroix, Tiger Hunt, 1854. Oil on canvas, approx. 2' 5" x 3'. Louvre, Paris.

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• Delacroix's visit to North Africa also heightened his awareness of

the expressive power of color and light, and made him aware

that color appears in nature only in an infinitely varied scale of

different tones, shadings, and reflections.

• In this regard, Delacroix anticipated the later development of

Impressionist color science.

• Delacroix thoroughly and definitively explored the domain of

Romantic subject and mood.

• His technique was impetuous, improvisational, and instinctive, and

epitomized Romantic-colorist painting.

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The Dramatic

in Sculpture

• FranÁois Rude's colossal,

densely packed relief

sculpture of

La Marseillaise on the Arc

de Triomphe in Paris is an

allegory of the national

glories of revolutionary

France.

• It shows the stirring

departure of the

volunteers of 1792 led by

Bellona, the Roman

goddess of war and

personification of Liberty.

FranÁois Rude, La Marseillaise, Arc

de Triomphe, Paris,

42' x 26‘, 1833-1836.

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• Antoine-Louis Barye's bronze of a Panther

Attacking a Stag shows the bestial violence and

brute beauty of nature.

Detail

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Landscape Painting in Germany

• Landscape painting, which became popular in the nineteenth

century, often used nature as allegory in which artists commented on

spiritual, moral, historical, or philosophical issues.

• In Germany, especially, most landscape painting expressed to some

degree a Romantic, pantheistic view of nature.

• Artists participated in the spirit of nature, interpreted the signs,

symbols, and emblems of nature's universal spirit, and translated

nature's transcendent meanings.

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Caspar David Friedrich(1774-1840)

• The German Romantic transcendental landscape painter Caspar

David Friedrich painted landscapes as sacred places filled with a

divine presence.

• His solemn and deeply reverent Cloister Graveyard in the

Snow is filled with emblems of death.

Caspar David Friedrich, Cloister Graveyard in the Snow, 1810. Oil on canvas, approx. 3' 11"

x 5' 10" (painting destroyed during World War II).

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• City at Moonrise

36C.D.Friedrich, Abbey in the Oak Forest, 1810, oil on canvas, 4' x 5'8 1/2", Staaliche Museen, Berlin

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The Tree of Crows

1822

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C.D.Friedrich

Wanderer Above a Sea of Mist

1817

Oil on canvas

3'1 3/4" x 2' 5 3/8"

Hamburg Kunsthall

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Landscape Painting in England

• Because of its severe effects on the countryside, the Industrial

Revolution had an impact on the evolution of Romantic

landscape painting.

• Romanticism would blossom in England as well although most

English painters stayed closer to home.

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John Constable (1776-1837)

• During the 1820s John Constable began to win recognition:

• The Hay Wain won a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1824 and

Constable was admired by Delacroix and Bonington among

others.

• The Haywain shows a placid, picturesque scene of the

countryside painted with attention to the texture that the

atmosphere and state of the weather gave to the landscape.

• The painting has a nostalgic, wistful air

The Haywain, 1821, oils, 50 x 72”, National Gallery, London.

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Constable developed his own original treatment from

the attempt to render scenery more directly and

realistically, carrying on but modifying in an individual

way the tradition inherited from Ruisdael and the

Dutch 17th-century landscape painters.

He never went abroad, and his finest works are of the

places he knew and loved best, particularly Suffolk

and Hampstead, where he lived from 1821.

John Constable. Wivenhoe Park. 1816. Oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA

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Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

• Turner was 15 years old when he received a rare honor--one of his paintings was exhibited at the Royal Academy.

• By the time he was 18 he had his own studio. Before he was 20 print sellers were eagerly buying his drawings for reproduction.

• Venice was the inspiration of some of Turner's finest work.

• Wherever he visited he studied the effects of sea and sky in every kind of weather.

• He developed a painting technique all his own. Instead of merely recording factually what he saw, Turner translated scenes into a light-filled expression of his own romantic feelings.

The Grand Canal, Venice , 1835; Oils, 91.4 x 122.2 cm;

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

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• Turner's The Slave Ship uses the emotive power of

color to convey the tragedy and cruelty of an incident

that occurred in 1783, in which the captain of a slave

ship ordered the sick and dying slaves thrown

overboard.

• Turner's use of color had an incalculable effect on the

development of modern art.

Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Slave Ship, 1840. Oil on canvas, 2' 11 3/4" x 4'

1/4". Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

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• J.M.W. Turner set his scenes against backdrops of

brilliant color. His work became increasingly became

nonrepresentational although he usually had a

subject in mind.

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th ,October, 1834 1835; Oils, 92 x 123 cm; Philadelphia Museum of Art

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Romantic Americans

• Thomas Cole was the leader of a group of painters in new

York and New England called the Hudson River School.

• They painted awesomely Romantic images of America's

wilderness, in the Hudson River Valley and also in the

newly opened West.

• The use of light effects, to dramatically portray such

elements as mist and sunsets, developed into a

subspecialty known as Luminism.

• In addition to Cole, the best-known practioners of this style

were Albert Bierstadt and Frederic Edwin Church.

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• Cole’s expansive, panoramic view of The Oxbow (the

Connecticut River near Northampton, Massachusetts)

with a dark stormy wilderness on the left and a sunlit

and more civilized landscape on the right.

Thomas Cole, The Oxbow (Connecticut River near Northampton), 1836.

Oil on canvas, 6' 4" x 4' 31/2". The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902)

• Albert Bierstadt's large painting Among the Sierra

Nevada Mountains, California presents a panoramic

view of breathtaking scenery and natural beauty.

• Bierstadt's paintings, which called national attention to

the splendor and uniqueness of the regions beyond

the Rocky Mountains, reinforced the popular

nineteenth-century doctrine of Manifest Destiny.

Albert Bierstadt, Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California, 1868.

Oil on canvas, 5' 11" x 10'. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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Frederic Church (1826-1900)

• Was the best known pupil of Thomas Cole, who recognized

the singularity of American wilderness landscape and was

the first to invest it with heroic grandeur.

• Frederic Church also believed, like his contemporaries, that

close study of nature was essential to grasp unique

underlying truths which had moral implications.

• Thus, he was very impressed by the writings of the German

naturalist, Alexander von Humboldt.

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Von Humboldt specifically encouraged landscape painters to travel to those parts of the world having the greatest botanical and geological variety.

Church traveled through the northern Andes where he made sketches of rivers, waterfalls, and volcanoes

Frederic Edwin Church, The Heart of the Andes, 1859, oil on canvas,

167.9 × 302.9 cm (66.1 × 119.3 in), Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.

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• Frederic Edwin Church's Twilight in the Wilderness,

which shows a panoramic view of the sun setting over a

precisely depicted majestic landscape, is firmly

entrenched in the idiom of the Romantic sublime.

• Church's idealistic and comforting view contributed to

the national mythology of righteousness and divine

providence.

Frederic Edwin Church, Twilight In the Wilderness, 1860. Oil on canvas,

101.6 cm. x 162.6 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio.

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George Caleb Bingham (1811-1879)

• While Cole stayed in New England, Bingham followed the

American dream west.

Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, 1845, oils, , 29 x 36”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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• George Caleb Bingham, was also an active participant

in Missouri politics throughout his life.

• Every aspect of Bingham's art was informed by politics--

his portraits, genre scenes, history paintings, and even

his landscapes.

• His paintings offer a tantalizing glimpse of life in mid-

nineteenth century Missouri.

Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers Through the Cumberland Gap 1851-52

Oils, 36 1/2 x 50 1/4 “, Washington University Gallery of Art, St. Louis,.

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George Catlin(1796-1872)

• George Catlin was the first

artist to record the Plains

Indians in their own

territories.

• He admired them as the

embodiment of the

Enlightenment ideal of

"natural man," living in

harmony with nature.

• Catlin considered the

people of the northern

Plains the least corrupted

by white contact, and

helped establish their

image as nature's

sovereign nobility in

Europe as well as

America.

• This commanding portrait

was exhibited to favorable

notice in the Paris Salon

of 1846.

Buffalo Bull's Back Fat,

Head Chief, Blood Tribe,

1832, oil, 29 x 24 in.

Smithsonian American Art

Museum

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Winslow Homer (1836-1910)

• Winslow Homer's The Veteran in a New Field is a

simple and direct commentary on the effects and

aftermath of the American Civil War.

• The painting also comments symbolically about death,

both the deaths of the soldiers and of Abraham Lincoln.

• It also contributed to the continuing mythmaking about

national conditions.

Winslow Homer, The Veteran in a New Field, 1865. Oil on canvas, 2' 1/8" x 3' 2 1/8".

The Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York.

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• As a “special

artist” for

Harper’s Weekly

during the Civil

War, Homer leaves

us documentation

of this piece of

American history.

Home, Sweet Home 1863

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• Today, Homer is renowned for his innovative and expressive use of watercolor which contributed to its becoming accepted as a fine arts medium.

Winslow Homer, Key West: Hauling Anchor, 1908, watercolor and graphite on

paper

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• Near the end of the 19th century, the so-called Second Industrial Revolution paved the way for the invention of the radio, electric light, telephone, and electric streetcar. Industrialization and the migration of rural dwellers to urban centers led to growth in the number and size of cities.

• The logic of Social Darwinism served to justify Western racism, imperialism, nationalism, and militarism.

• The constant opposition between those who controlled the means of production and those whose labor was exploited to benefit the wealthy and powerful created a dynamic that caused change.

• Societal changes prompted a greater consciousness of and interest in modernity, which resulted in the development of modernism in art.

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Realism

• Realism developed in France around the mid-century. Its leading

figure was Gustave Courbet (1819-1877).

• Realists focused attention on the experiences and sights of everyday

contemporary life.

• Courbet's The Stone Breakers shows the drudgery of menial labor

directly and accurately.

The Stone Breakers, 1849. Oil on canvas, 5' 3" x 8' 6".

Formerly at Gemaldegalerie, Dresden (destroyed in 1945).

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• Gustave Courbet's monumental Burial at Ornans depicts a

funeral in a provincial landscape attended by ordinary, unposed

people who cluster around the excavated gravesite.

Gustave Courbet, Burial at Ornans, 1849. Oil on canvas, approx. 10' x 22'. Louvre, Paris.

• Through their crude use of pigment, neglect of the conventions of

illusionism, and manipulation of the composition.

• Jean-François Millet was one of a group of French painters of

country life who settled near the village of Barbizon.

• In The Gleaners, Millet depicted impoverished peasant women

gleaning wheat left in the field after the harvest.

Jean-François Millet (1814-1878)

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Jean-Francois Millet, The Gleaners, 1857. Oil on canvas, approx. 2' 9" x 3' 8". Louvre, Paris.

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Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)

• In Harbor of La Rochelle, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot shows

his commitment to the faithful rendering of scenes he

encountered.

COROT, Harbor of La Rochelle, 1851. Oil on canvas, approx. 1' 8" x 2' 4".

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven

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Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)

• Honoré Daumier confronted authority with social criticism and

political protest.

• In his lithograph, Rue Transnonain, Daumier depicts in a factual

manner an atrocity that took place in a workers' housing block on

a street in Paris.

• During a workers demonstration an unknown sniper killed a civil

guard. The police retaliated by storming a building and killing all

the innocent residents.

Honore Daumier, Rue Transnonain, 1834. Lithograph, approx. 1' x 1' 5 1/2".

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia.

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• Daumier brought the same convictions to his paintings.

• In his unfinished The Third-Class Carriage shows the

working-class poor seated on wooden benches inside a

cramped and grimy railway carriage.

DAUMIER, The Third-Class Carriage, ca. 1862. Oil on canvas, 2' 1 3/4" x 2' 11 1/2". Met, NY

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Édouard Manet (1832-1883)

• Manet was a pivotal 19th century painter.

• His work was critical to realism and played a role in the

development of Impressionism in the 1870s.

• Manet’s intetrest in realism and in modernist principles is

evident in Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe where he bluntly shows two

clothed men and an unidealized nude woman in a Parisian park.

Manet, Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), 1863. Oil on canvas,

approx. 7' x 8' 10". Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

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• Manet’s work would have been acceptable had he shown

men and women as nymphs and satyrs but he lifted the veil of

allusion and bluntly confronted the public with reality.

• Manet's broadly painted Olympia shows a shameless nude

woman reclining on a bed.

MANET, Olympia, 1863. Oil on canvas, 4' 3" x 6' 3". Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

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• To better explain the public’s

reaction, compare Olympia to a

work by the highly acclaimed

academic painter of the time

Adolphe-William Bouguereau.

• In his Nymphs and Satyr,

Bouguereau depicted

ideally beautiful nymphs and

a satyr in a naturalistic but

traditional academic

manner.

Bougereau, Nymphs and Satyr,

1873. Oil on canvas, approx. 8' 6"

high. Clark Institute, Williamstown,

Massachusetts.

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Marie-Rosalie (Rosa) Bonheur (1822-1899)

• Bonheur was the most celebrated woman artist of the 19th century.

• Not interested in the social complexities in the work of Courbet and

the other realists, she was known primarily as a painter of animals.

• Bonheur's dramatically lit and loose painted

The Horse Fair shows sturdy farm Percherons and their grooms on

parade at the annual Parisian horse sale.

Bonheur, The Horse Fair, 1853. Oil on canvas, 8' 1/4" x 16' 71/2".

Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York .

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Realism Outside France

• Although French artists took the lead in promoting realism, the

movement was not exclusively French.

• Realism's interest in depicting the realities of modern life also

appealed to artists in such countries as Germany, Russia,

England, and the United States.

• Realism emerged in a variety of forms and places and was well

established by the end of the century.

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American Realism

• The place of Realism in America is hard to define.

• On one hand, Americans, as a group, prefer a straightforward, practical

approach to art. Don’t give us grand allegories that require a lot of

analysis.

• On the other hand, we don’t like seeing anything ugly or politically

extreme. We like to be shown a pleasant reflection of ourselves and

our society.

• It would be well into the 20th century before Americans would really

begin to produce an art that was truly American.

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Thomas Eakins(1844-1916)

• Thomas Eakins is regarded by most critics as the outstanding American painter of the 19th century and by many as the greatest his country has yet produced.

• He began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1876 and was attacked for his radical ideas, particularly his insistence on working from nude models.

• In 1886 he was forced to resign after allowing a mixed class to draw from a completely nude male model.

Miss Van Buren , c. 1886-90, Oils, 44 1/2 x 32 “, The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.

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John and Barney Biglen, wearing blue scarves around their heads, white

shirts trimmed with blue, and black trunks, rowing towards the right, almost

in profile; they are bending forward, their oars almost at the end of the

backward stroke; John Biglen is the rear rower; Barney is looking down to

his left. The bow of another shell appears in the foreground. In the

distance, steamboats are following the race, and the banks are crowded

with spectators.

The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1876, oils, 24 x 38”,The National gallery of Art, Washington.

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The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1876, oils, 24 x 38”,The National Gallery of Art, Washington.

73

• Using what he knew of the anatomy of a person, Eakins depicted the human body in motion in paintings of sailing, rowing, and hunting.

• In Eakins' time, rowing was a new and swiftly growing sport for the middle class snd he got caught up in the excitement of rowing.

• When he received the opportunity, in April of 1871, of displaying a work at the Union League of Philadelphia he chose to paint a rowing scene rather than a domestic scene.

• That painting was The Champion Single Scull, later known as Max Schmitt in a Single Scull.

• Max Schmitt, then a practicing lawyer, had been Eakins' childhood friend and was a leading competitor in amateur rowing. His decision to paint his friend in the activity of rowing marks the artist's commitment to contemporary subjects. Eakins was one of the first artists to portray rowers in action.

74

• Eakins approached Dr

Samuel D Gross (1805-

84) with his idea for a

portrait in the operating

theatre at Jefferson

Medical College.

• Gross was an

innovative surgeon and

champion of surgical

intervention. This

operation - to save a

gangrenous leg by

removing pus - is one

he pioneered.

• The unsparing, brutal Realism of Thomas Eakins's The Gross Clinic shows the surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross in the operating amphitheatre of the Jefferson Medical

College in Philadelphia.

Eakins, The Gross Clinic, 1875.

Oil on canvas, 8' x 6' 6".

Jefferson Medical College of

Thomas Jefferson

University,

Philadelphia.

75

In Photography….Edward Muybridge(1830-1904)

• Edward Muybridge invented a device called a zoopraxiscope.

• Link to this

website to

view his

experiments

in motion.

Muybridge,

Galloping Horse, 1878.

Albumen print. George

Eastman House, Rochester,

New York.

76

John Singer Sargent(1856-1925)

• John Singer Sargent's informal

family portrait The Daughters

of Edward Darley Boit shows

four girls in a hall and small

drawing room in their Paris

home.

• The casual

positioning of

the figures and

seemingly

random choice

of the setting

communicate a

sense of

spontaneity.

John Singer Sargent, The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit, 1882.

Oil on canvas, 7' 3" x 7' 3"Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

77Details from John Singer Sargent's

Daughters of Edward Darley Boit

78

Henry Ossawa Tanner(1859-1937)

• Tanner studied art with Eakins in Philadelphia but spent most of

his adult life in Paris.

• In The Thankful Poor, this American Realist painter portrays with

dignity the life of the ordinary people.

Tanner, The Thankful Poor, 1894. Oil on canvas,

4' 1" x 2' 11 1/2". Private collection. Henry O. Tanner. The Thankful Poor. 1894. Oil on canvas. Private collection.

79

The Pre-Rapaelite Brotherhood

• In England, John Everett Millais was a founder of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists who used Realist techniques to represent fictional, historical, and fanciful subjects.

• Embracing the pre-industrial past, they refused to be limited to the contemporary scenes other Realists portrayed.

• The subject of Millais's Ophelia (from Shakespeare's Hamlet) is the drowning of Ophelia, in which he attempted to make the pathos of the scene visible through faithful attention to every detail.

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1852. Oil on canvas, 2' 6" x 3' 8". Tate Gallery, London.

80

Gertrude Käsebier's (1852-1934)

• Käsebier's Blessed Art Thou

among Women is a photograph

with a symbolic theme.

• Photographers began to

realize the potential of the

camera to produce both

romantic and narrative

effects.

• Kasebier was one of the first

to work in the pictorial style

of photography.

KÄSEBIER, Blessed Art Thou

among Women, ca. 1900. Platinum

print on Japanese paper, 9 3/8" x 5

1/2". Museum of Modern Art,

New York

81

Various Revivalist

Styles in

Architecture

• The same taste for the

exotic that appealed to

painters, showed up in

architecture as well.

• Here at the Royal Pavilion

at Brighton, England, a

seaside get-away

become a fantasy Indian

Palace.

82

• John Nash's (1752-1835)design for The Royal Pavilion

at Brighton exhibits a wide variety of non-Western artistic

styles.

• The exterior is a conglomeration of Islamic domes,

minarets, and screens ("Indian Gothic"), while the interior

decor ranges from Greece and Egypt to China.

John Nash, Royal Pavilion, Brighton, England, 1815-1818.

83

• In the nineteenth century, nations came to value their past

as evidence of the validity of its ambitions and claims to

greatness.

• Art and architecture of the remote past came to be

regarded as a product of cultural and national genius.

• When the Houses of Parliament were rebuilt following the

fire in 1834, the architect A. W. N. Pugin designed a Neo-

Gothic building because of the moral purity and spiritual

authenticity he associated with religious architecture of the

Middle Ages.

Charles Barry and A. W. N. Pugin, Houses of Parliament, London, designed 1835

84

• J. L. Charles Garnier employs a festive and

spectacularly theatrical Neo-Baroque design for the

Paris Opéra.

Photo, exterior, main facade in historical context.

Contemporary photo, exterior, down street to main façade.

85

86

• Much of the city of Paris was rebuilt under the direction of Georges Eugene Baron Haussman.

• Along the boulevards radiating from the Arc de Triumphe, Haussman made all the buildings similar in style.

• The most striking new building was the opera house designed by Charles Garnier to be the showcase of the new Paris.

The Grand Staircase of the Paris Opera, 1861-74, Charle Garnier -

architect

87

• Henri Labrouste used a modified, revived Renaissance

style to accommodate the skeletal cast-iron elements in

his design for the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in

Paris.

Henri Labrouste, reading room of the Bibliothèque Saint-Geneviève, Paris, 1843-1850.

88

• Along with the industrial revolution came new materials and uses.

• Cast iron was used to hold up large expanses.

• Among the remaining examples is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle in Milan, Italy.

• The gallery is shaped in the form of a cross. The glass ceiling and the dome are made from iron and glass and, at its highest point, reaches 150 feet.

89

• The Crystal Palace, built by Joseph Paxton to house

the Great Exhibition of 1851, is a vast glass-and-iron

building built with prefabricated parts.

Photo, elevation overview of original building.

Engraving, perspective overview, eye level.

90

91

PHOTOGRAPHY

• Knowledge of lens and photography dates back to the

Renaissance when artists played with lenses and developed

camera obscura.

• Photography as we know it today was not possible until we were

able to “capture” the image and “fix” it permanently.

• Photography and painting will experience parallel developments

and styles.

• Photography permits artists to freeze motion and study it in

detail.

92

• The first person to do this was Joseph (Nicephore) Neipce. This view from

his window is believed to be the first photo. It was exposed for 8 hours.

93

The next innovator was Louis Daguerre who produced this image which

we call a daguerreotype.

94

• In the carefully constructed tableau Still Life in Studio,

Daguerre captured the details, the subtle shapes, the

varied textures, and the diverse tones of light and

shadow.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Still Life in Studio, 1837. Daguerreotype.

Collection Société Française de Photographie, Paris.

95

• In order to take the daguerreotype photograph

Early Operation under Ether, Massachusetts

General Hospital, Josiah Johnson Hawes and

Albert Sands Southworth took their equipment to

the gallery of the hospital's operating room.

Josiah Johnson Hawes and Albert Sands Southworth, Early Operation under Ether,

Massachusetts General Hospital, ca. 1847. Daguerreotype. Massachusetts General

Hospital, Boston.

96

• Next, came the Englishman

Fox Talbot who managed to

permanently “fix” his

images on chemically treated

paper.

• The process involved

lavender oil and ammonia

fumes.

• This image is a photogram,

made by laying the leaf on

the sensitized paper and

exposing it to light. No

camera was involved.

• In 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot introduced the

calotype, which made "negative" images by placing

objects on chemically sensitized paper and exposing

the arrangement to light.

• With a second sheet, he created "positive" images.

• His technique allowed multiple prints.

97William Henry Fox Talbot, Cloisters, Lacock Abbey, 1843

98

• Photography provided

the growing and

increasingly powerful

middle class with an

inexpensive means of

recording

comprehensible

images.

Eugène Durieu and Eugène

Delacroix, Draped Model (back

view), ca. 1854. Albumen print,

75/16" x 51/8". The J. Paul Getty

Museum, Malibu,

California.

99

• Gaspar-Félix Tournachon (Nadar)operated a popular portrait studio. His portrait of Sarah Bernhardt gives the actress a remarkable presence.

Nadar, Sarah Bernhardt,

1865

100

• Photography was unrivalled as a means for recording

historical events.

• Photographs of the American Civil War supply objective

records of combat deaths.

• Timothy O'Sullivan's A Harvest of Death shows the

bodies of Union soldiers killed at Gettysburg on July

1863.

O'Sullivan, A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July, 1863.

101

• It was the American, George Eastman,who made photography available to everyone by producing an affordable box camera.

• The consumer purchased a fully loaded camera which was returned to the factory where it was reloaded with new film and mailed back along with prints.

102

Summary:

• 18th century artists sought the “natural” landscape. Artists

like Greuz and Chardin found dignity in paintings of

“common” people.

• A defining characteristic of the late 18th century is a

renewed interest in classical antiquity, which is manifested

in painting, sculpture, and architecture, as well as in fashion

and home decor.

• Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon’s favorite painter used

classical themes,settings, and costumes to promote a

democratic ideal. Likewise the sculptor Antonio Canova

applied the same devices to sculpture.

103

• In America, Thomas Jefferson and American architects designed the new capitol in a neoclassic style.

• American artists went to London to study where they were led by American born Benjamin West in the academic style promoted at the Royal Academy.

• Classical antiquity was also felt in England, where it emerges in a simple and commonsensical style of architecture derived from the authority of Vitruvius through the work of Andrea Palladio and Inigo Jones.

• Other artists moved beyond the somewhat structured confines of Neoclassicism in their exploration of the exotic and the erotic and in the use of fictional narratives for the subjects of their paintings.

104

• Landscape painting, which became popular in the

nineteenth century, often used nature as allegory in which

artists commented on spiritual, moral, historical, or

philosophical issues.

• John Constable's paintings were painted with attention to

the texture that the atmosphere and state of the weather

gave to the landscape.

• J.M.W.Turner's use of color had an incalculable effect on

the development of modern art.

• Thomas Cole led the Hudson River School and painted

his expansive, panoramic views of the American

Wilderness.

105

• Romanticism believed in the value of sincere feeling and honest emotion. It emphasized feeling, imagination, intuition, and subjective emotion.

• To their exploration of the exotic, erotic, fictional, or fantastic, Romantic artists such as Goya also incorporated dramatic action into their paintings. Goya creates The 3rd of May as a political protest.

• Géricault's ambitious painting of the Raft of the Medusacombines a realistic attempt to record the event accurately with a Romantic taste for the drama and horror.

• Delacroix visits North Africa in his Romantic conviction that beauty exists in the fierceness of nature, natural processes, and natural beings, especially animals, which he painted in scenes of violent and exotic tiger hunts.

106

LINKS:

• National Gallery London (Index)

• Metropolitan Museum of Art (N.Y.)

• WEB Museum (Paris)

• Carol Gerten’s Fine Arts - Artists Index

• Mark Harden’s Artchive

• The Louvre (Paris)